Tick tock...tick tock...clip clop...
In the pitch black vortex that was the gaudy Malfoy carriage, Audette began to phase out, listening to the rhythmically clicking steel hooves of the invisible Thestrals pulling them through the snowy countryside.
The rotting transitory beasts had certainly been imperceptible to Audette as they'd clambered up the carriage stairs. However from the way that Draco's wistful gaze had stopped in place to peer at the air surrounding the anterior of the carriage, she could tell that the opposite was the case for him.
It was exceptionally uncomfortable to consider who he had witnessed perish right before his eyes, or how many people at that, or by who's hands precisely...
Frequently left drunk on her love for the complex and dangerously attractive boy, Audette often misplaced the harsh reminder that his secret life was in fact defined by nightmarish characters and regretful gore.
And now, that secret life was hers to share.
She dreaded to speculate that in no time at all, those gruesome Thestrals would be visible to both of them.
Shudder.
With the glowing school property far out of sight and mind, the narrative of the rural trail evolved into a tale of forebode and terror.
The landscape was shadowy with very little light emanating from the clouded moon, a single gas lantern swinging off the front of the open air cab to divide the pivotal void ahead by mere meters.
Immediately upon entering the ancient transport a strange sort of ennui settled between the two lovers, emphasized by the fact that Audette elected to take the booth opposite Draco so that they were forced to stare into each other's eyes in the gloomy space.
It had been such a tumultuous evening, filled with laughter and love, yet also sadness, heartbreak and more questionable emerging lies.
After several minutes of putting on a show of contemplatively staring out the window with his pointy chin in his hand, Draco turned his silver eyes on Audette in sudden confrontation, holding up two lanky fingers in a gesture of confusion, "Well come here then. Is there some reason in particular you are insultingly seated four feet from me?"
Aside from a steadily growing fearful anticipation of her first visit to the formidable Malfoy Manor, she was faraway in her mind with the words tick tock ringing in her ears like an overzealous and forgotten grandfather clock begging for attention.
"I'm not particularly in the mood for cuddling, I'm...I'm overheating," Audette fibbed pathetically, sucking in her lips.
"You're overheating?" Draco laughed and made a dramatic face of disbelief.
Truthfully, Audette was frozen to the bone in the uninsulated cabin which naturally did not come equipped with air conditioning, and nothing would be more lovely than stuffing her popsicle fingers into his shirt collar to impolitely steal away his manly warmth.
But an untoward conversation was necessary before any provisional cuddling could be administered; because cuddling would lead to kissing, and kissing would inevitably lead to Audette actually overheating and tearing off his belt buckle.
If she wasn't mindful of their insatiable attraction to one another, the windows of that carriage would be as fogged up as that unfortunate Coupé de Ville in the Titanic cargo bay before she could get any answers about the night out of him.
Obviously unconvinced of such absurd, infernal qualms, Draco raised his eyebrows to his hairline and scoffed, "Riiiiight. In December...you are overheating, you who can't handle a spritz of autumnal rain to watch my Quidditch matches. Spit it out already, because I can see that you're overthinking."
She dropped her long lashes to her lap, toying with the fabric of her sensational dress, "Did you coerce Guy Cosmos to set his bet on me? Were you the architect behind my friend's blatant betrayal, Draco?"
He sat forward, ringed hands clasped between his bony knees, eyeing her down with a growing sneer on his face which when formed tended to famously pull his nose into a sharp point and delve a set of concentrated ridges down his forehead.
She glanced into his eyes as he responded in a dark voice, evidently unremorseful, "Yes. And I would do it again. Still grateful for that bet bringing us together? Or has it's revealed origin tainted everything for you, in the same manner you were just worried agreeing to it might taint everything for me?"
Well he had a point there.
She gulped and shook her head, sending him a pained grimace, "How else were you going to get me to hold your hand, right? That's how it was all along?"
"Oh Jesus Christ Audette, we were so close to having a peaceful night," he growled heavily and hung his silky platinum strands down towards the floor, breaking their eye contact to drive his thumbs up the bridge of his nose, "Can you really say with total confidence that if I had candidly pursued you for a relationship, instead of arranging for you to pursue me, that it would have resulted in us dating? About as likely as a mermaid singing at an orchestra."
Audette crossed her legs radically unladylike, allowing for the long slit in her gown to slide between her thighs on one side and down to her waist on the other so that her entire slender leg was exposed.
It was a move that perhaps would serve to distract him from being especially sour.
She folded her arms and fell back into her seat, fluffy plumes of golden hair framing her face, "My biggest sore over this web of sticky bets, is that now we shall never know what is truly organic about how we ended up in love, in this carriage and on our way to your estate under such weighty expectations."
"What the fuck are you on about?" Draco defended from where he was still avoidantly facing the stone flooring, but she could sense from his twinging tone that his patience was promptly running dry, "Did I not press you to move slowly, so that we might have time to connect through spontaneous activities and conversation?"
"Yes, that is true..." Audette rolled her eyes, still stubborn beyond belief.
She blinked rapidly, "But I can't help surmising that we could have hit it off naturally without another added element of deceit. You were simply too much of a coward to try on your own. And now my best mate and I are in a bicker, and poor Theodore Nott is even worse off having found out about this bet tonight, so thank you kindly for that unnecessary chaos."
When he sat back glaring at her - patience as dry as an Egyptian mummy - Audette's beating heart abruptly fell through her chest cavity and into the roiling stomach acid below.
He wrapped one arm around the back of the leather chair, twisting his spine in place, his eyes narrowing in the overwhelming shadows within the cabin.
Inconsiderate of Audette's preferences for air quality he lit a cigarette in the personable space, the embers at the tip flashing short publications of his expression before vanishing off and on again.
"How dare you brand me a coward," his icy voice sliced like a sharp iron blade across the surface of her bare skin, leading Audette to uncross her leg and shrivel below her dress and petticoat.
She'd carried through on said prompt to provoke the dragon at hand, but it was most certainly not in the flirtatious format they'd been insinuating on the dance floor earlier.
Half of his pretty face disappeared into the depths of obscurity, making him appear especially villainous as he spat a long-winded reply through the billowing smoke, "A coward would have given up on your overprivileged nonsense a long time ago, comprised of bruising rejections. How many humiliating, unanswered owls did I write to you? How many times have you slapped me over a puny ordeal? Admit it, you're the Rosetta Stone of crazies, and quite frankly the idea of approaching you without assistance was inconceivable suicide."
It was true: Audette had resorted to slapping Draco as a defense mechanism - too many cringe worthy times to count in fact - and it was a bloody miracle he didn't have a tiny red handprint permanently imprinted on his left cheek after their incongruent run ins.
She looked repentantly into his one disappointed, visible eye, suddenly losing sense of why she felt entitled to attack him over the bet, which had been explained by those involved as rooted in adoration, "Alright I stand corrected, a complete coward you are not, but a coward to some degree for this social disarray nevertheless."
Draco glanced away and shook his head carelessly, "Whatever Audette, then a complete crazy you are not. I see we are both confident in our own justification; no sense in quarrelling over the matter any further."
Shadowing the statement, an uneasy sensibility gnawed at her gut like a tug of rope within her intestines.
The bet should never have been set in the first place because it was blatantly manipulative, and that was Audette's lingering ethical intuition...an intuition that seemed to be increasingly nebulous in the presence of his cunning rhetoric.
All she desired in that moment was a simple apology, for him to acknowledge why it was offensive and destructive.
Yet Draco had narcissistically outspoken her once again to avoid such a concession; a predictable attribution he would no doubt stick to like white on rice unless when absolutely cornered.
He was correct that Audette showcased unhinged tendencies towards him, yet he'd used this information to effectively divert from the disenchanting bet to place attention solely on Audette's mistakes instead.
He watched her reticently reconsider for a minute before she sighed softly, hoping that if she went first he would mirror her, "Very well; I am sorry for acting as I have. We'll overlook the origin of this bet due to my historic volatility, and on the condition that this scheming is not a reoccurring theme. Between either of us."
"Hmm, apology accepted. Although I must admit at times those slaps do turn me on considerably," Draco snorted and puffed on his nasty cigarette, thick smoke curdling from the poor health habit which was now beginning to tickle Audette's throat uncomfortably.
Unremorseful.
Would do it again...
When Draco Malfoy had his mind set to something he clearly did not feel the need to verify whether it was his to take, nor did he feel the need to apologize for whatever ruthless strategies he employed to attain said item.
"Don't tell me you plan to stop now love, after all these years of teasing me with such flames," his shiny eyes landed back on her, flat and coy, and with no return apology in sight.
"I'm not sure how to respond to that polarizing confession," Audette chomped on one of her immaculate nails as they traded fleeting eye contact, wishing she had Think-Think's input for the confusing exchange.
She'd left her precious pudgy teddy in the care of her mother, Eloise, who was a tender Magizoologist in comparison to Montgomery, who wielded a hand more akin to that of an uncompassionate circus ringmaster.
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Taking in a deep breath she raised her shoulders for a moment, "For the record Draco, I never received a single one of your owls until a week ago, else I would have replied in a timely regard. They were beautifully written, and I can only imagine how eclipsed you must have felt at the enduring repudiation. You see my father he...well he kept them all locked away."
Draco mysteriously glanced up at the bowed ceiling, exacting a heavy exhale before shutting his eyes, "Well isn't that just unmissably splendid. Right there would been a perfect opportunity to avoid all manner of said deceit."
He tossed the butt of his dart out a crack in the tiny window then continued to play into his detached pensiveness, hiding behind his eyelids while slumping his head back into the chair.
Rubbing his forehead he groaned lightly, lost somewhere in the endless hallways of his savvy mind, his watch pane lighting up like a large digital blueberry in the dark.
While the short argument had terminated with mild amicability, she couldn't help considering in depth the way that he conducted himself in the background of social circles.
Each time a new bout of treachery trickled into perspective it warped her concept of him, wondering if perhaps he was suffering from such extreme abuse at home that he felt completely out of control of his life.
She pondered if instead of simply communicating in a healthy manner he felt the irresistible need to constantly trick others in order to ensure total control over the results of his pursuits.
If this was true, then she was about to enter into an engagement with someone who required serious counselling. Either it was innocent fear driving his circumspective behavior, or something much more insidious beyond rehabilitation...
"I hate it when you look at me like that," Draco remarked savagely without opening his eyelids to verify the mysterious accusation.
"Like what?" Audette blinked away up at the Gothic lace curtains next to her face, having just been staring at his handsome features and lanky spread knees. She had nearly fallen into a mindless trance, struggling once again to merge his surficial beauty with her understanding of the disturbing traits lying within.
"You know precisely what," Draco hissed cryptically, snapping open his attention to frown at her.
Like you're the Devil, Audette thought guiltily in her head, popping her eyebrows silently.
"Are you going to come here now, or are there other outstanding compunctions you would like to resolve?" he flicked his lighter repeatedly on his thigh, showcasing impatience and disdain for the change in their shared energy since departing the ball.
Might as well put the Devil to the test for his ability to be honest then, seeing as they had already opened the can of worms labelled A Chronicle of Our Lies; A Story by Audette and Draco.
"What did Theodore mean by tick tock tonight, Draco?" she inquired calmly, a small pout on her bottom lip seeing as she already knew the answer.
The carriage was now rambling through a bizarre narrow passage which had been carved out of a barren hill, perhaps by a prehistoric, uneducated civilization given the hazardous and superfluous zig-zagging layout.
As such they were both swaying in place as the meager metal wheels pinged off of lousy unearthed rocks, and the strange wavering motion did little to add to the tense atmosphere other than make it more awkward and jangle Audette's earrings noisily.
Draco provided her with nothing but a flat expression and a slippery issuance of wit and snark, "I don't know Audette - do you think he's planning to seek a tragic career in Horology as an irrelevant show of revenge?"
Audette couldn't bare the degrading hypocrisy a second longer, blurting out, "Just what are you going to do if he uses that godforsaken Time Turner to tear us apart and restart everything? What then?"
The truth tin ruptured instantly, strings of worms bursting out like mounds of squishy spaghetti.
"He won't, because I will never let him take you away from me again," Draco blew off any instinct to react to her startling degree of knowledge on the situation, squinting at her suspiciously for a second.
Her direct question could only mean one thing; an admission that she had been spying that night in front of the mysterious vanishing door.
"How could you possibly corroborate such confidence? I cannot live with this threat looming over us every minute of the day," Audette gasped, rubbing her freezing fingers together. Her nose had also gone pink and numb in the thirty minutes they'd been traversing, and cuddling was starting to look like a requirement and not a request.
She hadn't expected to feel so sorrowful upon bringing up the incredible concern to Draco, but now that they were speaking openly to one another as partners doomed to be separated, her heart began to seize in terror.
Looking her square in the eyes Draco coolly snarled, "I know with certainty because I will kill him if he does not relinquish it to me."
Stunned, Audette stared into the unblinking eyes of the ruthless proclaimed murderer across from her, sitting there in a golden bowtie as if he were some adorable talk show host and not a hostile Death Eater.
A blistering silence followed suit the dreadful determination.
She chewed so hard on her bottom lip to repress tears that surely there would be teeth marks on her chin later.
When she could not hold it any longer she covered her mouth with her glove and panted out little pained sighs, shutting her eyes to absorb hot tears, "No...no..."
"What would you have me do, Audette?" Draco's deep voice cut through her agony, pitching microscopically at the sight of her so upset, "I've tried snagging it but he never removes the bloody thing from his neck. You've imposed over me to assist him through his Excetra duties and in the third trial, so I will, but those contradictory promises lie in isolation from this issue. I warned you of said demands being absolute balderdash."
"You cannot do both at once, how does that make any sense? You promised to help him and keep him alive," Audette pandered breathlessly, feeling now that she'd been betrayed by partially influential avowals.
Draco threw up his hands to the ceiling in duplexity, "Oh spot on - let's support the unhinged lunatic with the Time Turner, and sit around pissing in our diapers while he unravels the fucking universe."
"You wouldn't dare kill him, I refuse to accept that is in your nature. There must be a way to steal it. Tell Dumbledore," Audette sniffed and brushed at her runny nose, her vision blitzing with tiny silver sparks presenting as on onset of cranial hypertension.
They had clearly travelled a substantial distance, as the terrain outside notably flattened out then, indicating perhaps that they were getting close to the countryside Manor.
The mystic clouds engulfing the mountainous region where Hogwarts was located had dissipated, and the rays of the nearly full moon filtered in through the mothy cloth over the windows.
Draco's rigid glare lit up across from her in high definition; stern, ghostly and resolute, "Dumbledore is senile - he defends Nott each time we are brought before him. It's an exhausted avenue, not to mention one that Snape has warned me against utilizing. Apparently the Time Turner belongs to McGonagall, and the dark lord will be furious if it ends up back in her hands as a result of my soft nature."
He clenched his fist at his side and ground his jaw, fuming across the way, "Unfortunately, I will be fighting with one arm behind my back, because my darling fiancée has conveniently banned my ability to make good use of the third trial, where he will be wholly unprotected by nothing but myself...for fuck's sake the ironic idiocy."
Breaking out into a symphony of girlish sobs, Audette yanked off her tiara and buried her face in both hands, utterly petrified, whispering, "If you do this, I'll despise you until my last living day on this planet."
She could barely make out the heavy, perplexed exhales of Draco a few feet away for a good three minutes, before she felt his cold fingers wrap around one of her stiff hands to guide it between them in the aisle.
He squeezed lightly as she adjusted her free hand to crookedly hide both eyes once more, "Audette, if annihilating Nott was a desirable concept to me, I would have eradicated him eons ago without a reason as serious as this one. You cannot judge me for what must be done."
When the crying only endured, louder and more harrowed, she eventually heard him press off of the parallel booth whilst cursing under his breath.
In an unanticipated show of kindness he sat beside her and wrapped his arm around her shoulders to guide her face into his neck, his tone modifying to a mellow lilt.
He let out a deep groaning puff of guilty breath as Audette continued to choke, nuzzling into his clothing for comfort, "Do you feel so sorry for him that you would blindly permit him to risk everything - not only the prior year of your own memories - but also the very fabric of corporeality?"
"Of course I feel sympathetic for him - he's heartbroken and terrified, and he does not deserve to die. Can't you relate to his struggle at all?" she hugged Draco around his waist, turning her forehead under his sharp chin to watch the sliding landscape through the driver's window.
Out in the fog the creepy lantern was bouncing maddeningly on it's wrought iron staff, casting light off of gnarled tree branches in all directions.
Whatever being was manning the Thestral reins in that front seat was foreign even to Audette, represented by nothing but a floating black cloak and two swirling green orbs of light where the metaphysical eyes might be in an intangible skull.
"No," Draco flatly sliced back at lightning speed.
He wheezed air curtly out of his nose, swallowing his Adam's apple against her forehead, "However...upon witnessing your reaction tonight...I might be wisely encouraged to covet the mechanism instead of acting impulsively to raze him. I can't have my wife despising me for all eternity."
Audette winced hopefully up at her betrothed through teary eyelashes, whom she was certain had a heart frozen somewhere at the center of the solid glacier occupying his inner chest.
It was a consistent campaign of chipping at that ice block with a pickaxe - but a heart was there, showing up as a blurry red mass through the translucent permafrost.
In a somber hum he cast his eyes away from her eager gaze towards the heavily tinted window, subconsciously twirling her hair in his fingers, "No one has ever felt sorry for me, and I've survived one-hundred times the horror. I am thus incapable of pitying his amateur experiences with bereavement...that part of myself died a long time ago, when I needed him most and he turned his back on me. I've shown strength in solitude, ergo he bares no excuse."
Audette caught her breath quietly, her heart rate halting just as abruptly.
She could recall knowing Draco quite well when he was eleven, twelve, thirteen, fourteen...consistently snickering and energetic, sporting a naïve verve for life and what it might hold for his bright future.
However over the years he'd become a misunderstood and blatantly feared demon who moved like a shadow through the halls, eyes flaring like scorching diamonds with an unfairly punishing attitude that kept others at bay.
No one had ever felt sorry for Draco Malfoy - not even Guy and Audette who'd backed out of the girl's lavatory when they had stumbled in on him weeping often - and he had succumbed to the assumption that he was abandoned with those painful throes.
Such a depraved way of life would indeed inform the development of a man who was apathetic to any comparable suffering.
In the wake of her paused sobbing, Draco misread her introspection for numb shock.
He continued to encourage her to ground herself, rubbing her shoulder with his thumb, "I've seen the state of the Time Turner and he has a ways to go yet. Months, if not more. Perhaps it can be coveted but that is a discussion for later. This subject will not be at the forefront of my thoughts over the next few days, and I would implore you to match that prioritization because I won't entertain it."
"Okay...thank you," Audette nodded in weak relief that she had brought up the Time Turner by pure chance, leaning her head into his neck where everything smelled wonderful and was quite warm.
She closed her rainy eyes and let her tears run parched, until her body temperature was cozy and the pang in her heart had ceased it's infernal scratching.
For a long while she fell asleep as he soothed her into a dreamy state with endless tickles of his fingers through her hair.
All the while his silvery eyes remained concentrated on the whooshing natural features of the British continent coming and going, his lips pressed into a firm line of discontentment that Audette had bulldozed him for the hundredth time.
When she came to, relaxed and peaceful in a hot sea of his piney musk, she was surprised to find that he was permitting his skull to knock relentlessly off of the glass pane with a deadpan expression - as if he'd perhaps suffered a brain-wilting stroke in the time she was out.
As she peered groggily at his lifeless gaze, it suddenly occurred to her that she'd overlooked something crucial he'd admitted to her that evening...something he'd admitted to the girl who was supposed to be his loving girlfriend, who contradictorily tended to only cry about the wellbeing of her ex...
She sat up and planted one exceptionally long peck on his cheek, then hushed in his ear, "I want you to know, that I care substantially about your pain too, Draco, and I feel sorry for you. If you would only educate me about these horrors that you are surviving, then my support for you shall be invincible and omnipresent."
Then she slid her arm around his neck and lost herself in his incredible pearly locks, and he in turn rubbed his flat palm up and down her back.
His chest tellingly shuddered to indicate that perhaps he was emotionally unprepared for the extremely overdue and alien reassurance, and Audette did not bother him to say anything other than receive her feathery kisses on the nape of his neck.
Clearing a tight throat he broke the crushing silence after several minutes of bear hugging, "Someday soon I will tell you about my life - but not tonight. Tonight I want to be about us, if that even remains optional after this tribulating carriage ride."
"Okay," Audette leaned back to place both of her gloves on his cheeks for a second before embracing him with touchy little pecks.
For a ridiculously extensive period of time they simply sat entwined in that bumpy carriage, lip locked and moaning delicately, unable to stop the slow burning embraces hardly long enough to breathe.
Until little hairs - one at a time like a game of reverse dominoes - raised along Audette's soft skin despite the hearth of Draco's encompassing limbs and the heavy petticoat blanketing her thin gown.
A horrible chill of dread washed inexplicably throughout her nervous system, as if they'd just pulled out a Ouija board in the center of a graveyard and invited communication with all manner of demonic beings from the beyond.
The vibrations in the atmosphere made the nefarious energy around Castle Bellarose seem like it was merely due to a bad case of unsuccessful fengshui arrangement amongst the furniture and shrubberies.
Just like that the air flashed into one characterized by an electrifying freeze.
Audette thought for a moment that somewhere on the opposite face of the Earth the sun must have exploded seven minutes prior, bringing about the end of their solar system as they knew it.
Shifting away from Draco she stared into his gaze worrisomely, "Do you feel that? It's...wicked beyond description. It's some form of airborne, ubiquitous malice. I can feel it in my bones, my heart, I-I can't quite..."
He seemed to be struck with the same inexplicable sensation, stiffening in place with a rueful nod.
She followed to where his solemn eyes darted in jagged squiggles out the window behind her shoulder, "Welcome home, Audette."